There are plenty of great reasons for sales and marketing teams to work more closely together:
“Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoy 36% higher customer retention rates.”marketingprofs.com
“Sales and marketing alignment can help your company become 67% better at closing deals.” marketo.com
“B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieve 24% faster three-year revenue growth and 27% faster three-year profit growth.” siriusdecisions.com
And yet, how many marketing and sales teams remain almost completely cut off from each other? Is it because they haven’t seen the latest statistics? Probably not. A more likely reason for the disconnect is that despite all the potential upside, many of us have ingrained beliefs that create strong emotional resistance to change.
Does the sales team think that marketers are clueless about what real prospects are looking for? Is marketing fed up because the sales team refuses to use the content they spent so much time creating? Does each team believe that the other “just doesn’t get it”?
Aligning marketing and sales requires fundamental changes to how both teams approach their work. Without first addressing the resistance to those changes, how can the individuals involved — human beings with their own unique emotions, tightly-held assumptions, and core beliefs — possibly be expected to truly work together as a team?
Statistics might inspire quarterly interdepartmental meetings and well-intended initiatives, but real change requires honesty about why we may not want to change at all.
marcusschaller.com 